Padma Lakshmi Gets Honest About Speculation Surrounding Her Baby's Father

Padma Lakshmi wanted to be a mother for as long as she can remember. However, like many working women, the "Top Chef" host prioritized her career in her 20s and didn't think about having a family until she was in her mid-30s, as she said on People's "Me Becoming Mom" podcast. But when she was 36, Lakshmi learned she suffered from stage 4, or severe, endometriosis, a disorder that affects the uterus and can interfere with pregnancy, she revealed for Redbook Magazine in 2011. Lakshmi underwent a series of surgeries and was informed she was unlikely to be able to conceive naturally. "You can imagine how it would have felt at that moment, in my late 30s," she said. The diagnosis also elicited anger that it had come so late, considering she had been experiencing symptoms for many years. "I could have prevented at least a decade of suffering," Lakshmi said.

As a precaution, the "Tangy, Tart, Hot & Sweet" author opted to freeze her eggs. She ended up not needing them after all; in 2009, Lakshmi discovered she was pregnant, Us Weekly reported that October. "As a result of her condition, this pregnancy has been referred to by her physician as nothing short of a medical miracle," her rep told the magazine at the time. While the news was nothing short of bliss for Lakshmi, she was also overwhelmed by speculation surrounding the identity of the father, which she hadn't made public. Now, Lakshmi is opening up about the experience.

When Padma Lakshmi didn't reveal who the father of her baby was, his identity became subject of intense media scrutiny. "It certainly was icky when the press started snooping around in various countries — not just America, but in India, England, Australia. At that time, it was splashed all over the newspapers and it was mortifying," Lakshmi said on a December 9 episode of People's podcast "Me Becoming Mom." Lakshmi was "sort of between relationships," as she put it. She was casually seeing two men when she discovered she was pregnant and was herself uncertain of his identity, a situation she explained in her 2016 memoir "Love, Loss, and What We Ate" (via Independent). 

After divorcing novelist Salman Rushdie in 2007, Lakshmi began seeing Theodore J. Forstmann and, later, Adam Dell. "It probably wasn't the best choice, but it was the choice that I made at the time. I didn't want to be in a serious relationship. I was still really hurting from my divorce," she told TODAY in 2016. It turned out that Dell was the father of her daughter, Krishna, who was born in 2010. Despite the revelation, Lakshmi and Forstmann decided to give their relationship another try, according to Us Weekly. When the billionaire died in 2011, he included Krishna in his will, the report detailed. Lakshmi and Dell continued to have an on-again, off-again relationship until early this year, when they went through an "amicable" breakup, per Page Six.